Local lawmakers attend Benghazi, Boston bombing hearings

U.S. House Republicans held investigative hearings this week on two terror events - the attacks on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi and the Boston Marathon bombing. On each committee was a local area lawmaker who attended the high-profile hearings, though neither questioned witnesses.

Rep. Matt Cartwright, D-17th district and Rep. Lou Barletta, R-11th district, had diverging views on the respective hearings. Cartwright blasted Republicans for holding the Benghazi hearing while Barletta had been among those calling for a congressional examination of the Boston bombings.

Cartwright put out a statement before the Benghazi hearing, calling it "partisan grandstanding" and not the true mission of the Government Reform and Oversight Committee, of which he is a member. As the hearing continued on Thursday, Cartwright went on MSNBC and declared there was no news.

"I expected a real bombshell to come out today. And I literally sat on the edge of my seat, listening for the bombshells to come out … There was no news today. There was nothing today that we didn’t already know about,” Cartwright said.

Many Republicans would disagree. They hope to prove that in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2012 attack the Obama administration aimed to cover up its mishandling of security in Libya. On Friday, Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey joined the GOP chorus calling for a thorough congressional investigation.

Meanwhile, Barletta was eager to ask a question at the Homeland Security Committee’s Boston hearing, but his turn never came, his spokesman said. He submitted four questions for the record, including why there are still holes in the government's "ability to monitor who enters and exits our country" and why the Homeland Security department didn't tell the FBI when "its system “pinged” that Tamerlan Tzarnaev [one of the suspected bombers] had left America for Russia on his way to Dagestan?"

During the hearing, the Boston Police commissioner said he was never told by federal authorities that they had been warned by Russia about Tzarnaev, though he added that he couldn’t say whether that would have resulted in a different outcome.